Squirrel Sunday......

It's been a slow squirrel week.....so I thought I would just "tell a tail tale" (say that 3 times fast). I think the Fox Squirrel's tail looks a lot like a "wooly worm" caterpillar....what do you think??
Star's tail is often the most expressive part of photos. The fluffy "foxy orange" coloring probably earned him his name.

Some seem fluffier than others. Winter seems to be a prime time for them to get bushy.

The mixture of orange and black fur is really pretty!

I love when they hide from me under that tail. It seems real handy in bad weather....snow.....

....or rain.

Sometimes it's up.....

....sometimes it's down....

....sometimes it's curved.

Star always seems to be talking in some sort of "tail language" to show his mood. It is also, his flag to wave to alert others to danger.

Sometimes there isn't much room for the tail at all when the seating arrangement is a bit snug!

OK....that's it for this week!

Taking a bird break to watch and observe....

( My posts are getting mixed up in order. I wanted to post that hornet attack below and have other stuff from that trip as well as more from the arboretum visit.....but also have my home birds getting active. The rain break in tennis has given me some time to take photos.)

Every day, I spend some time standing by the front door watching the birds that come to my tree outside. This relaxes me and I forget about other things for awhile. "Is this my mother?"
"I don't think this bird is going to feed me...."

"...here is my mother!"
"I'm thirsty, but I get the strangest feeling someone is watching me"

"That water looks so good"

"I'm going to ignore that frog and drink anyway."

I caught a few minutes of hummingbird activity.

Checking it out and zeroing in

I don't usually catch the tail flash.....must be an intruder around.

Guarding from above.

The downys have began to show up every day looking for suet.
They are there year round, but recently I hadn't seen much of them.

"You looking at me?" His feathers are so clean and pristine white looking right now. Is this one of the youngsters born back in May? Maybe.

" Good stuff.....keep this suet feeder filled! That's an order!"
Even if I don't have time to go somewhere, I can always count on my home birds to come around and give me a few minutes of peace and relaxation as I smile at their antics.

Hornet attacking spider......(R rated for violence)

Friday we went to Henderson Slough where we were trying to get photos of the many Monarch butterflies passing through the area. I saw a large "bee/wasp" in the flowers and started trying to take a picture of it. Suddenly it flew directly into a spider web and we figured it was a goner. However, that was not the case......My "bee/wasp" turned out to be a European Hornet and it was attacking the spider and not vise versa! They are about equal in size. I kept shooting and tried to get all the action, but the spider started dropping down on its silk string and they were falling to where I could barely see them.

Here the wasp is still in an early struggle with the spider...or maybe it is already dead. If you click on it to make it large, you can just barely see the web silk that the spider is hanging from.

Obviously at this point the hornet had won the battle. I couldn't tell if it was eating it or what it was doing with it.

What an evil look it is giving me!......."Back off....this is mine!"

Little by little it dragged the poor spider down off the leaf. Going....

......almost gone. I don't know where it took the spider or what happened next, but a few minutes later it flew back out of the leaves and we decided it would be a good idea to leave, too.

This was creepy! I felt I was watching a Sci-Fi movie of some monster attacking another monster. Yuck!

Pretty in Pink......and more pink....lots of pink....

I think these photos give a good idea of how popular these flowers are with the skippers, butterflies and bees.....more than you ever wanted to see! I saw most of these at the arboretum on their sedum and a few on mine at home. This first photo is to show how covered they get with the various "bugs".
Buckeye Butterfly

Skipper in "jet fighter plane position"

Surrounded on all sides!

Painted Lady tip-toeing across the pink flowers.

I love how the flowers look close-up. A touch of green in this one to go with the pink.

Pearl Crescent

Bees love these

The color looks a bit more purple here with this little tan skipper.

A dark skipper....I don't know the name of any of these skippers.

Lost in a sea of pink

A pair of wasps....hard to tell what they are, but I have a side view as well.

These flowers are pretty when they are still turning pink.

The Live-for-Ever is the star of the show.

I really did see other flowers and critters, too and will save them for a separate post.

Did I make you sick of pink?????

Stopping to smell the flowers......

I guess with all the tennis I am watching right now, I'm not doing much to "stop and smell the flowers". These late night matches that last until 11PM are really getting to be a drag, even though they are exciting to watch! Only a few more days and they will be done. Live-for-Ever......one of the flowers that I associate with my childhood. We had a row of them along the fence and I always thought they had a beautiful color. I thought maybe "Live-for-ever" was a made up name, but I Googled it and it is one of the names given to these Sedum plants. If you break one off accidentally, you can stick it in a pot or in the ground and it will start growing. They are easy to spread and do seem to "live forever".
Hopey and Ozma......sisters on guard to keep the birds away.....took a look at the flowers, too.

Hopey even tried a sniff, but I don't think she was impressed. These flowers are often covered with little butterflies and bees.

Ozma giving them her best queenly stare.....too haughty to be caught sniffing them.

I guess bees are always "smelling the flowers". These Obedience plants are so beat down from a storm we had a couple nights ago, that I couldn't find any to get a good photo of what they look like.

The vine tree has lots of bee "sniffers" right now.

The downy prefers to smell the suet rather than the flowers, which just get in the way.

A Goldfinch sitting among a bounty of seeds with that bewildered look that says "I'm young....I found the seeds...what do I do now???"

House Finch perching on the vine.

One of those little gold and pink moths that I don't know the name of. They are really tiny.

My front yard is growing a bumper crop of mushrooms under the big trees since the last storm.

These were fresh white ones that I spotted this morning.

Well, I guess if I want to "smell the flowers" I'd better go somewhere other than my own yard. Today is the day the arboretum is open to the public, so I'll head there later and get away from the TV for awhile.